More than 100 million years ago, the ancestors of the first snakes were small lizards that lived alongside other small, nondescript lizards in the shadow of the dinosaurs. More than 100 million years ...

For the more than 242 million years that lizards and snakes appear in the fossil record, they show up mostly as pieces of lizard jaws and snake vertebrae. Exactly why these parts survive as fossils ...

Neotropical anole may look simple, but it belongs to an incredibly diverse group of lizards. There are more than 400 recognized anole species, each with its own unique traits and appearance. That ...

Lizards are ancient creatures. They were around before the dinosaurs and persisted long after dinosaurs went extinct. We’ve now found they are 35 million years older than we thought they were.

Today's living night lizards—like Xantusia vigilis (pictured)—are descendants of a common ancestor that lived roughly 90 million years ago, well before the Chicxulub asteroid struck Earth 66 million ...

Every identifiable group of plants and animals on Earth has a unique combination of body shapes, behaviors and ecology that distinguishes them from all others. What about the different kinds of ...

For more than fifty years, museum herpetologist George Zug has studied all manner of reptiles and amphibians Jack Tamisiea A slender-toed gecko in New Guinea. In 2020, Smithsonian herpetologist George ...